Manufacturers often attempt to reduce the cost of their products while maintaining the same quality. In an attempt to reduce the cost of producing an integrated circuit, there are a variety of areas in the manufacturing process to attempt to reduce cost. For example, it may beneficial to reduce the amount of material, and particularly the amount of expensive materials, required to produce the integrated circuit. One expensive material used in the production of integrated circuits is gold used in wire bonds between bond pads on a die and bond pads on a substrate.
However, whenever making any reduction in materials, it is important to ensure that the reduction does not adversely affect the performance of the integrated circuit. For example, while attempts could be made to reduce the lengths of bond wires, such a reduction may result in shorting of the wire bonds. That is, a reduction in the length of wire bonds of an integrated circuit may lead to a significant decrease in the wire-to-wire gap. With reduced wire lengths, adjacent wire bonds can make contact, resulting in wire shorts. Further, conventional encapsulation or molding techniques can result in the “sweeping” or movement of wires after the molding process, leading to wire shorts. Such wire shorts may be more likely in regions having a greater density of wire bonds, where the wires may have very little gap between them. Total yield loss due to wire short can be as high as 2.5% to 7% of total assembly yield loss.